Commercial enterprises compete for customers by promising, among other things, low prices and fast delivery. Successful competition often requires careful monitoring of profit margins and deadlines. Such monitoring requires a system that provides accurate and timely business information. It is no longer sufficient to periodically examine financial data and other information that indicates the state of the corporation. Rather, continual monitoring is necessary. Businesses rely on their latest performance information to support strategic planning and decision making, so any businesses without a system for providing accurate and timely business information would be placed at a huge disadvantage.
Accordingly, most businesses track at least their financial data in a computerized financial reporting system that can generate reports on demand. Many large entities have reporting systems that continually process large numbers of complex transactions which may be occurring at many locations around the world. With such information readily available, corporations are turning to sophisticated forms of data processing to identify patterns and provide forecasts. Often an overabundance of information is now readily available for processing, and analysts may desire an automated method of recurrent pattern extraction to simplify modeling and forecasting operations.